ANKARA (AA) - Mehmet Elkatmis, the Chairman of the parliamentary human rights follow-up committee met Claudia Roth, the Chairwoman of German-Turkish parliamentary friendship group on Tuesday. Claudia Roth said in the meeting that German Green Party defended Turkey's EU bid, adding that they regarded Turkey as part of Europe. Roth stressed that she wanted to get information about the reforms in Turkey as she was concerned that the reform process slowed down in Turkey.

Elkatmis said in his part that the reforms were being implemented denying any slow-down in reforms.

''We see that there are only some individual cases of torture or maltreatment complaints in Turkey and the judiciary is dealing with them,'' Elkatmis said.

Referring to the incidents that took place on Women's Day in Istanbul, Elkatmis said that some countries in Europe harshly accused Turkey, stressing that basing accusation of a country only on an individual incident was unacceptable.

''What the police did was wrong, but you can't put the blame on police only. Provocation of certain radical and illegal organizations was also in question,'' he said.

Showing Roth some newspaper clipping which included the photos of French and German police who used force against high school and university students, Elkatmis said ''but such incidents in Europe are ignored... We don't accept such dishonest evaluations and accusation of the whole nation and country in order to isolate it from EU.''

''I consider right voicing the problems of Turkey and I expect tolerance from you in return,'' replied Roth.

Referring to desecration of Turkish flag and the reaction of the people to that incident, Elkatmis said ''the incident didn't turn into a Turkish-Kurdish matter (although some circles wanted to do it) due to the common sense of the people.''

Elkatmis stressed that the ECHR decision on terrorist head Abdullah Ocalan would be evaluated, adding that ''Ocalan is a terrorist who caused the deaths of 40,000 people.''

He said that he would also present Roth a file giving examples from the fact that court verdicts--accepting that the rights of Turks living in Germany were violated-- were not implemented, and he also referred to the German ban on Turkish newspaper Akit without a court decision.
2005-05-17